It may look like it is easier to fail than it is to succeed, but being a failure at something is hard to manage as well, especially if you’re the leader in the workplace. The cost of failure is very painful that will lead to several consequences. Many time the failure will lead to financial consequences, social consequences and affect several aspects of an individual’s life. No error can be tolerated and accepted in our fast-paced business world today where the stakes are often high, and much could be lost by failure. You will be out of the race if you keep on failing. Your competitor will overthrow you out of the competition if you commit failures time and again. But much can also be gained from failure in leadership when managed from a positive perspective. In this paper, I will examine how transformational leaders manage the through failure.
Almost all people have the fear that they will fail, and this happens much time in the course of the life. Actually, the fear of failure has the impact when we stop acting in a certain way or behave in a certain way and stops us from moving ahead in the path of goal achievement as a result of failure. It is also called atychiphobia.
There can be numerous causes of fear of failure. Some of them can be due to the unsupportive family, lack of expertise in some work, lack of confidence, frequent humiliation from the leaders and the lack of an effective leader. Some people have the fear of failure as a result of some bad experience in their past or in their childhood. Keeping all the other causes aside, this paper will focus the fear of failure in the lack of effective leadership and discusses on how the transformational leader pave their way to success through failure.
Failure is most often feared, especially when it’s in front of our peers. Most people get that pit-in-the-bottom-of-their-stomach feeling when they realize that they’ve failed. Embarrassment and disappointment are commonly experienced along with the realization of a failure. It is something most of us fear and try to avoid, especially at work where “mistakes can really cost you” as they say. Of course, we want to be successful, so we dread making mistakes and try to avoid being a failure.
Yet, there are always “two sides to the story,” and this is true about failure as well. According to Larry Weinzimmer and Jim McConoughe in their article on the website FastCompany.com., “In leadership, we often miss out on half the story. Most discussions focus on what leaders ‘should do’ rather than on what they ‘should avoid.’ The result [is that] we talk about success, but seldom talk about failure.” (Weinzimmer & McConoughe, 2012). For the leader to be effective, a leader must understand the situation from both aspects. He must know what he must do as well as what he must not do. If the leader focuses on only how to behave or respond in the particular situation, then he will be covering only the half of the situation. A leader must be an example to their follower, and if a leader accidently does the thing which was supposed to be avoided by the leader, then it might turn the situation upside down leading to negative results. This will decrease the influence of the leader in the followers.
Every person in the life experience several failures, and it has become an integral part of everybody’s life just as much as the opposite and is inevitable because nothing is perfect. Therefore, we should learn to be brave enough to accept our own mistakes as a positive thing by learning not to let it happen again. We clearly remember some of the big failures in our lives because of how badly it felt when they happened and how long it took to recover from them. They burned a deep impression in our minds, and we were very careful after that not to let it happen again because we didn’t want to feel that again.
Two ways to use failure to improve your vision as a leader are to:
1. Discern why you failed and strived to apply what you have learned to projects executed in the future; and
2. “Use speed - fail fast and early, and then get up and go on”. (Gergen and Vanourek, 2008)
Some of the key traits that are possessed by transformational leaders are:
The ability to keep their ego the balance-
When you are holding the power position, it is easy to let it go to your head. However, in transformational leadership, the leader must try all the alternatives to balance their ego and take all measures to avoid the interference of leadership power in the performance or responsibility that best serves the interest of the group or the organization. By controlling the ego arising from the power position, the transformational leader will be able to put the organizational interest above the personal interest and perform with the best of his abilities to achieve the organizational goal effectively and efficiently. Such kind of behavior will also motivate others to perform better. If the leader is guided by the ego, then a situation will come when all the followers will take the leader as an enemy driven by the ego.
Inspirational
People look to be empowered, and the leaders with transformational leadership tend to be the most inspirable leader among all. Transformational leaders are enriched with the ability to motivate the followers very easily in a different situation and stand up to the plate. The way they follow to inspire the followers is not limited to the ceremonial acknowledgment for the successful completion of the work or a quick pat on the back; rather this kind of leader see employees as an asset and respect each follower as an individual with value and takes sufficient the time to understand what motivates the employees or followers. A leader must be able to inspire the followers with his ideas, opinion, work and personality. Because the leader stands as a role model for the followers, many of the characteristics of the leader are reflected in the follower. Some of those characteristics can be the way the leader talks, dresses, makes an opinion, discusses with the followers, handles the situation, etc. So, a leader must always have the inspirational ability.
Leading with the vision
Transformational leaders lay down-to-earth and achievable visions for the company. The leader then communicates the carefully set vision with the followers in a way that they understand it in efficient as well as effective way. They also influence and inspire their followers to achieve their commitment as well as the purpose. The leaders bring all the followers in the common track marked by the common vision; they become successful in driving the organization in the direction they want (YScouts).
If I were to envisage the influence of the response of the transformational leader regarding the impact of failure on the performance as well as the behavior of his or her teams, I would say that the employees will be watching closely, and the leader should be careful to take responsibility and be accountable right away. The leader sets the tone for the employees and if they do not handle the situation with integrity, then neither will the employees.
There are some few best practices that the leader must follow to increase their effectiveness after tasting the failure. Some of them are:
Recognize early when a failure is eminent: The leader must be able to recognize the early signs of the failure. Nothing fails suddenly and there are always the signals that indicates the failure. A leader must recognize them.
React to the failure at the moment: A manager must be able to react with the correct measure instantly. A leader must be proactive and correct the failure.
Reflect on the causes of your failure: It is very important for the leader to identify the causes of failure. Knowing the cause of failure and learning from the past is very important for a leader.
Rebound with confidence: Even after multiple failure, a leader must not be hopeless. The confidence must be always high in the leader.
Remember the failure (Zeitlin): Once after being fail, a leader must always learn from the failure. Forgetting the failure and moving on is not a wise step rather a leader must always take a lesson from the failure and move ahead to achieve the goals that were determined.
The following are three reasons why you should embrace failure and not be afraid to take another risk:
It’s part of the business journey- Nearly every definition of the word “entrepreneur” focuses on the word risk. The risk is at the core of all business breakthroughs and success.
Nothing ventured. Nothing gained- If you’re not willing to float a new idea for your company, play around with your marketing or launch a new business venture, the opportunity that sits in front of that idea will never manifest. It will never come true. You’ll never really grow.
The new innovation and the discoveries are nurtured in the ash of failure- Multiple failures lead you to new discoveries and innovation. Until and unless you try and learn from your failure, you cannot trace the path of success. The seeds of opportunities germinate on the soil of failure. There is no superior time after you fail and learn to understand your mistakes. This learning will provide you the best performance (Steizner, 2014).
As we move ahead making the big picks in life and career, it would be purely foolish and premature decision to carry on without having the careful evaluation of the potential consequences of the choices as well as the cost of failure associated with the choice. But in the course of our decision making, we disregard the two most considerations frequently:
First, failing to understand the value of failing– the value of accomplishment for a goal that is far beyond you and how, even if we fail, it springs us past our previous dimensions and strengthens us for the unavoidable encounters ahead.
Second, the life will be full of regrets, pains and sufferings when we do not capitalize the chances and work hard on our dreams that were in front of us.
I chose to interview one of my former supervisors to see what he had to say about failure:
Failing does not mean you’re a failure. It’s like a small sign that we don’t know everything. You have to take failure as well as a success because if we knew everything, we would have shut our mind off to learn anything else. You will never know all there is to know about anything, and with that attitude and response, you will achieve more goals in life than fail Fix it and try to make amends because you cannot un-ring a bell ”(Langehennig, 2016).
Reference
Gergen, C. & Vanourek, G. (2008 October 2) The value of failure. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2008/10/the-value-of-failure/
Walter, E. (2013 December 30). 30 Powerful Quotes on Failure. Forbes.com. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/sites/ekaterinawalter/2013/12/30/30-powerful-quotes-on-failure/#2d7c809c15d3
Weinzimmer, L. & McConoughe, J. (2012). Failure is the only option, if success is the end goal. FastCompany.com. Retrieved from http://www.fastcompany.com/3001086/failure-only-option-if-success-end-goal
YScouts. 10 Transformational leadership characteristics. YScouts.com. Retrieved from http 7 Amazing Ways Smart Leaders Turn Failure Into an Assetp://yscouts.com/10-transformational-leadership-characteristics/
Zetlin, M. 7 Amazing ways smart leaders turn failure into an asset. Inc.com Retrieved from http://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/7-amazing-ways-smart-leaders-turn-failure-into-an-asset.html
Steizner, M. (2014 December 26). Failure: Why Taking Risks and Failing Is the Path to Success. SocialMediaExaminer.com. Retrieved from http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/failure-the-path-to-success/
